Ammunition Accountability Act

That said i didnt realise just one company held the rights to this technology (it isnt mentioned on the linked site unless i overlooked it). The monopoly implications alone being clearly unreasonable.

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And if you read the legisislation, there is a "license fee" per bullet as well that the ammo manufacturer must pay to use the machine they spent 300-500k on. This is just a money making scam someone is trying to make look good.

And if you read the legisislation, there is a "license fee" per bullet as well that the ammo manufacturer must pay to use the machine they spent 300-500k on. This is just a money making scam someone is trying to make look good.

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The large ammunition manufacturers will be able to license the technology or come up with their own proprietary system that meets the requirement.

IN HB1260 died in committee, Give your reps an email letting them know you don't want it. You might be surprised at their response

I'm very happy with the responses I've received from my (D) representatives regarding gun legislation (and in general). In fact, if it weren't for the looney national leadership, I'll take my (D) reps over the (R)'s we've had in the past......

Another problem is that this is yet another band-aid, "feel-good" solution that won't work. Even if all ammunition could be coded, and the existing stuff can't (loophole #1), those codes are rendered meaningless when ammo is stolen and then used (loophole #2). The codes will not magically know who used them in a crime. But, the biggest fallacy is the same one that those who want such controls keep ignoring - only law-abiding citizens will be impacted. Laws do not stop criminals, by definition. They simply provide a basis for punishment if/when they are caught.

What happens if a law-abiding citizen buys coded ammunition, and is then burgularized? When people are robbed, they tend to think of the invasion of privacy and the loss of valuable items. It would be very easy to not notice that the ammo was stolen, so no mention of it is made in the police report. Later, the LEO's show up, wanting to know where the last owner of the ammunition was at the time their ammunition was used in a crime. At the very least, they are in for a long process where they are a prime suspect. Heaaven help them if they can't prove what happened to the ammunition or where they were at the time the crime was committed.

The truth of this is that while it sounds good, there is no practical basis to expect it to result in it's stated goals, only the unstated goals, such as the patent holder making a ton of money on a faulty implementation of technology. No thanks!

Oh yeah, loophole #3 - it will have zero impact on reloading without making all un-coded ammunition already in existence illegal. Such a law would be completely and utterly un-enforceable.

The truth is, the only criminals that this might have an impact on are those who aren't smart enough to not go to the store and use their real ID to buy some ammunition. Criminals, in general, aren't extremely smart, but they aren't completely stupid, either. So, a very small number of them might be caught, at a huge burden to all law-abiding citizens. The cost FAR outways the benefit.

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Loophole #4-Bullet is pulled using an impact bullet puller, number defaced and then replaced using reloading equipment.

Loophole #5-Person has lead, molds, and heat source and cast their own bullets.

I thought you were kidding until I went to the range last weekend. I stopped in a Wally world to grab a couple of 100 round boxes of Winchester target ammo. To my surprise, they were out. I grabbed the last 50 round box of Blazers they had.

Since then, I have been checking the local Wal-mart's around here and unless you count .22's... they are all (3 different stores in East metro Atlanta) completely out of handgun ammo. I'll have to go by Bass-Pro shop this week to see what the situation is there.

Without getting too far off topic. Do I chalk the local ammo shortage up to this or similar pending legislation? or is it panic buying based more on (and I am NOT trying to start anything by saying this) the recent changing of the political guard? Or is It something else entirely?

Copierguy, my gut instinct is that your local ammo shortage has more to do with the economy than any pending legislation or the new administration, though the political changover is probably influencing a lot of people to stock up on ammo, too.

Whenever the economy goes bad, crime rises. This makes people scared, and they stock up on ammo. The economy is mighty bad right now, and many types of crime seem to be on the rise, so people are stocking up as a way to make themselves feel safer.

Likewise, when the economy goes bad, factories produce less due to layoffs and increased production and distribution costs, and stores stock less of just about everything because everything they can't afford to be stuck with anything that might not move well enough to make a profit. I wonder if WalMarts around the country are getting fewer trucks in each week, and less of many items; my local WalMart seems to be out of stock or very low on about 5-10% of its total inventory on a regular basis.

The change in administrations also has many gun owners in a froth of panic, believing that the new administration will tighten restrictions on the purchase of both guns and ammo, so they're stocking up before that happens. Specific legislation aside, the feeling among many gun enthusiasts is that a Democratic administration with a Democraticaly-controlled Congress will be far more likely to enact highly restrictive gun legislation as a matter of course.

I don't know how valid all of these fears are, but I doubt that we'll see the total repeal of the Second Amendment any time soon.

Do we then have to make bullets of such a design that they will maintain integrity so that the markings will be readable? And what about shot guns. Are we going to ID each pellet in a round of bird shot? Another thing that I find disturbing is that law enforcement are excluded from this provision in many of laws as written. I think that they should be just as accountable for their shots as the rest of us, no offense to those trying hard to keep us safe.

Do we then have to make bullets of such a design that they will maintain integrity so that the markings will be readable? And what about shot guns. Are we going to ID each pellet in a round of bird shot? Another thing that I find disturbing is that law enforcement are excluded from this provision in many of laws as written. I think that they should be just as accountable for their shots as the rest of us, no offense to those trying hard to keep us safe.

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Officer's gun are tested when they are involved in a shooting and the bullets matched to a barrel. For them to be "exempt" from the intention of the law then they would need to fire there gun and not report it and never have it logged (then or in the future). Which is certainly going to end their career and possibly is illegal in itself (i have no knowledge either way).

As for being readable, the markings are repeated lots of times over the rear of the bullet so there will be something to see on it even in a mangled bullet. Bear in mind most bullets have marks from the rifling that is recognizable enough to be accepted in a court as evidence (unlike for instance lie detectors) and that is the main point of impact and can be recorded when impacting bone, with through and throughs into brick walls etc so are much more mangled.

You and everyone on here knows it's crap and a way to put the ammo manufactures out of business. Look at the FBI statistics on all this stuff. If they can't ban firearms, just price the ammo out with this requirement! Let's see, I could pull the bullet, score it to remove serial numbers and make the lans and grooves undefinable, not to mention making the gun un-identifiable as a felon who shouldn't touch a gun anway. :evil:

These are some of the points I worry about...the third one bothers me most

1. No one will be able to purchase unmarked ammo after June 30, assuming the new ammo will be available on July 1.

2. Government will know the exact amount and caliber one purchases after that date, a total invasion of privacy.

3. All privately owned and uncoded ammo will have to be destroyed by July 1, 2011.
(c) Any person who knowingly destroys, obliterates, or otherwise renders unreadable, the serialization required pursuant to this act, on any bullet or assembled ammunition commits a Class A misdemeanor

<sarcasm on>Well super. More excellent pieces of legislation showing up thanks to our friends in the government and their special interest buddies.<off>

I have also noticed near me that ammo is in short supply, especially the handgun variety. Without getting knee-deep into politics, my guess is the past election has scared a lot of people, and probably from both sides of the aisle. There have been numerous local newspaper articles talking about how gun sales have been through the roof, as well as concealed weapon permit applications. I'm afraid this is just the beginning...

+1 on getting an NRA membership and making your voice heard. Reminds me, I need to renew ASAP.

What am i missing? Seems a very reasonable thing to be able to identify bullets. Is the problem for most people just because it will add a few cents onto the unit cost, or is it just not wanting to have your bullets tracked for some reason?

Fwiw i think the most impact would be in "cases of passion", where otherwise normal people snap and end up killing someone they know over some argument or whatever. I can see a use for it in those cases, but clearly it isnt going to stop the bloods and crips tearing each other up.

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Of course it is not going to stop bloods and crips.

But I am interested in why, exactly, you think it might stop those "cases of passion" killings.
Are you saying that the angry husband would think twice about shooting his wife in a "moment of passion" because his ammunition is encoded and linked to his identity?
Coded ammunition or not, shoot your wife and there is going to be an investigation and you will be the prime suspect from the first minute, until you are eliminated as a suspect, IF you are eliminated as a suspect (which I would not expect, if you actually did shoot her). So I hardly think that the angry husband is going to decide against shooting his wife simply on the grounds of the fact that his ammo is linked to his identity.

Or are you saying that this would prevent cases where someone gets angry at his wife, says, "Wait right there, you hateful shrew!" and goes out to Walmart to buy himself the ammo that he will return home and use to murder her? That was the argument made for "cooling off periods" (waiting periods) for gun purchases. They said it would prevent a lot of "crimes of passion" that occurred "in the heat of the moment." But we saw right through that, because the implication was that there were many people who don't currently have a gun who would run out to a store and purchase their first and only gun so that they could run home to kill the hated spouse. It's a preposterous scenario, really.

I could use some clarification on what you think this kind of law would accomplish in terms of preventing criminal killings.

What about when someone picks up the spent casings and reloads them, am I on the hook for waht they did with my spent brass?

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Yes, so you have to dig every spent casing out of the sand at your local outdoor range, or risk being framed for a murder, I guess.

Not only that, but what about the guy, the "smart criminal," who picks up spent brass at this or that range, and drops it at the scene of a murder he has committed?

I don't think that the environmentalists will like this bill very much. Let's see, every year, there are BILLIONS of rounds of ammunition fired. If each one is encoded to a specific buyer, and reloading is, for that reason, no longer practical or even legal, then billions of rounds of brass will be wasted, unrecyclable, each year. How long can the earth keep coughing up brass for us like that? Isn't that rather "un-green"?

It's not the case, but the bullet. What they are proposing is the tail end of the bullet will be micro inscribed with a code that would have been registered to you when you bought the box of ammo.

Will you have any positive way to know that the code on the bullets is the same as the code on the box or that the same code has not been used on another box? NO.

Mark

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Very interesting point. Very scary, too.

Don't expect it to be raised in any congressional debates on the merits of passing this into law.
And if it is mentioned, don't expect it to have the slightest potential to keep certain members of congress from voting to make this into law.